“Political Science is the study of political behaviour, governance and power and how these are shaped by institutional settings, and by the ideas, interests and resources of political actors. It is about the authoritative allocation of resources and values, and the negotiation of conflict and difference. Political phenomena happen at all levels: personal, local, sub-national, national, regional, and global. Politics is about who gets what, when, how and why. As a sub-discipline of Political Science, International Relations shares similar concerns but its focus is on politics at the transnational or global level. Other important sub-disciplines of Political Science include comparative politics, public policy, political economy, and international political economy. Political science and its sub-disciplines are informed by political theory.” (APSA, 2011)

The project investigated how we can develop the necessary skills and knowledge of our first year students in politics in order to set them on the path to graduating with the threshold learning outcomes required by the time they graduate with a political science major. The project included a workshop attended by 27 politics academics from 14 universities. The resources on this website were developed using the outputs from these workshops together with literature on the teaching of political science.